In my column today, I take a little shot at soccer — “‘the beautiful game,’ barf.” I say what a relief it is to find that not all the nation’s baseball diamonds have been grassed over in favor of soccer. I mainly intended to praise baseball, once our “national pastime,” not jab soccer. But I found myself jabbing soccer anyway.
This has occasioned many, many letters, some of which begin, “I’m probably the only one of your readers who will stick up for soccer, but . . .” Rest assured, there’s an army. I promise to repent and sin no more — to observe a moratorium on sniffiness re soccer for . . . oh, two months? Three? I’m not sure I can make it to spring.
As I’ve said before, our Duncan Currie is a soccer man: a player of soccer, a student of it, a writer on it. And if Duncan likes something, it must have merit.
I think of the Microsoft vs. Netscape battle, years ago. Of the 100 legal experts I most respected, 99 were in favor of Microsoft. Bob Bork was in favor of Netscape. That, for me, made it an open question.